Too often, I’m asked to pay invoices by PayPal. There are a few reasons I discourage vendors to use PayPal. Being in digital marketing since 2009, I try to pass on lessons to those who haven’t been around as long, and this is one of them.
Using PayPal cost me $25 million
You may know the story if you’ve read my book on it or you were in the SEO space back then. It was 2011. I was in my 3rd year of digital marketing. My company was doing over $17,000/month which was a lot of money back then in high school. We were growing aggressively and on track to overcome Market Samurai’s market share, who was then valued at $25 million. PayPal killed all my MMR and froze payments to my contractors who helped build the tool by limiting my account. The full story is quite long.
PayPal makes tax deductions complicated
In digital marketing, a lot of people either don’t live in the West or they aren’t old enough to think about tax simplification. We use tools like Ramp, a multi-billion dollar company who has solved these problems really well.
If I’m spending 5-10x a day, that equates to a lot of receipts at the end of the quarter. Ramp handles all that if I use my credit card.
I’m not the one who is paying
Many times when I’m spending money, it’s not mine. It’s a client’s. PayPal doesn’t like when you have multiple accounts under the same name for different companies. Also logging into any other PayPal account but a personal one is putting your own account at risk.
Some think, just pay with a personal PayPal account. It is a bad idea to take on temporary debt for your clients in case they go bankrupt. Expensing can also take months. Don’t get stuck holding the bag.
